Overview

As any alien race able to reach us is likely to be considerably more
advanced than us, we would do well to develop a communications and
diplomatic protocol to minimize any frictions caused by a first contact
situation, be it friendly, unfriendly or neutral. In particular, we
would discourage actions which could all too easily be misinterpreted
as overtly hostile such as preemptively scrambling  let alone
launching  nuclear weapons during a possible first contact. The
rule when engaging in contact with an alien race is to do anything
possible to avoid war since we are quite likely to lose.

This program will be devoted to developing the first contact
protocol.

In addition to this protocol, we should be careful about any devices
that we are told to construct via alien messages, as such devices could
be
unfriendly AI or other harmful devices.
If such a danger is suspected, this warning must be
immediately
made public knowledge to discourage others from activating possible
alien
weapons.

Finally, we are
against any efforts to on purposely provide our
technological level and location to potentially hostile aliens.

First Contact Protocol

A policy of non-physical contact communications would be a good first
start. We should keep a reasonable quarantine distance until a level
of trust has
been established.

Communication Types

Mathematical Languages

An example of a mathematical language is
Lincos, published in 1960 by Hans Freudenthal, which
created a general purpose language derived from basic math and logic
symbols.

The Lincos “dictionary”, intended to be transmitted first before any
additional messages, begins with a simple pattern of pulses intended to
establish the terminology for natural numbers and basic arithmetic
(addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) in base two. The
concepts of equality, comparison, variables and constants are also
illustrated by a series of examples, and then finally propositional
logic, set theory and first-order logic.

The next section
of the Lincos
dictionary establishes vocabulary for describing time, introducing
means for measuring durations, referring to moments in time, and
talking about past and future events.

The third section is
perhaps the
most complex, and attempts to convey the concepts and language
necessary to describe behavior and conversation between individuals. It
uses examples to introduce actors speaking to each other, asking
questions, disapproving, quoting other people, knowing and wanting
things, promising, and playing.

Finally, the fourth
section describes
the concepts and language relating to mass, space, and motion. This
last section goes so far as to describe physical features of human
beings and of the Solar system.

Pictorial Communication Systems

Colorized version of Arecibo
Message

Pictorial communication systems seek to describe fundamental
mathematical or physical concepts via simplified diagrams sent as
bitmaps. These messages assume that the recipient has similar visual
capabilities (weak assumption) and can understand basic math and
geometry (strong assumption because both are prerequisites for building
the optimal shape for a radio or optical telescope). A common critique
of these systems is that they assume a shared understanding of special
shapes, which may not be the case with a species with substantially
different vision, and therefore a different way of interpreting visual
information.
An example of a pictorial message is
the
Arecibo message, transmitted in 1974, which was a 1679 pixel image
with
73 rows and 23 columns.
Reading from left to right and from top to bottom, it states (or shows)
the following:

the numbers one (1) through ten (10);

the atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen,
oxygen, and phosphorus;

the formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA);

the number of nucleotides in DNA;

a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA;

a graphic figure of a man and the dimension (physical height)
of
an average man;

the human population of Earth;

a graphic of the solar system, i.e. Earth’s solar system; and

a graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope and the dimension
(the
physical diameter) of the transmitting antenna dish.

The yellow graphic of the solar system is shown
from left to right, showing the Sun and the planets in
the order of their position from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

The Earth is the third planet from the Sun  its graphic is
shifted up
to identify it as the planet from which the signal was
sent.

In addition to showing position, the graphic provides a general,
not-to-scale size reference of each planet and the Sun.

Another example of a pictorial communication system is
the Voyager probes, launched in 1977, which carried two golden records
that
were inscribed with diagrams depicting the human form, our solar system
and its location. Also included were recordings of pictures and sounds
from Earth which actually made this a multi-modal message.

Multi-Modal Messages

An example of a multi-modal message is the
Teen-Age Message, composed
by Russian scientists (Zaitsev,
Gindilis, Pshenichner, Filippova) and teens, was transmitted from the
70-m dish of Evpatoria Deep Space Center to six Sun-like stars on
August 29 and September 3 and 4, 2001. The message consists of three
parts:

Section 1 represents coherent sounding radio signal with slow Doppler
wavelength tuning to imitate transmission from Sun’s center. This
signal was transmitted in order to help Extraterrestrials detect the
TAM and diagnose the radio propagation effect of interstellar medium.

Section 2 is analog information and represents musical melodies,
performed on the Theremin. This electric musical instrument produces
quasi-monochromatic signal, which is easily detectable across
interstellar distances. There were seven musical compositions in the
1st Theremin Concert for Aliens.

Algorithmic Communication Systems

Algorithmic communication systems are a relatively new field. In these
systems, which build upon early work on mathematical languages, the
sender describes a small set of math and logic symbols that form the
basis for a rudimentary programming language that the recipient can run
on a virtual machine.

Algorithmic communication has a
number of
advantages over static pictorial and mathematical messages, including:
localized communication (the recipient can probe and interact with the
programs within a message, without transmitting a reply to the sender
and then waiting years for a response), forward error correction (the
message might contain algorithms that process data elsewhere in the
message), and the ability to embed proxy agents within the message. In
principle, a sophisticated program when run on a fast enough computing
substrate, may exhibit complex behavior and perhaps
intelligence.

An example of an algorithmic communication system is
CosmicOS,
designed by Paul Fitzpatrick at MIT, which describes a virtual
machine that is derived from lambda calculus.
Learn more about CosmicOS!

Establishing Communication

If intelligible, then the answer
depends very much on what we believe the message says… which suggests
the answer may include a) acknowledgement of receipt of the message; b)
what we believe the message to mean; and c) request to confirm that our
interpretation is accurate and if not for them to rephrase the
message.

If not intelligible, then we want to send a message which says
(in
a variety of ways that we think they might understand, informed by
elements from their message) a) acknowledgement of receipt of a
message; b) declarations in various forms that we did not understand
the message nor any parts of it; and c) request to resend the message,
but perhaps in a more complete form, or to send us a different message
using elementary logic, mathematics involving universal constants, and
an elemental iconic language.

As soon as we have any kind of contact which is unintelligible to us,
we should send them the modern equivalent of the Rosetta stone:
a sample of text translated into most human languages  living
languages
as well as ancient ones.

To establish communication it will be necessary to create a
common reference from which further discussions could be conducted. We
recommend that a list of “Universal” references be created that could
be used to form a basis for further
efforts.

A demonstration of prime numbers and universal mathematical concepts,
such as Pi, Pythagoras and various other mathematical formulas, and
then a exchange of simple chemistry would be a good
start.

There is no reason to necessarily expect that our new
“friends” would have evolved in an environment that would have lead
them to evolve the abilities to either see or hear in the same
frequencies that we do. If the physiology of the aliens is sufficiently
different we may not possess the appendages or organs to make easy
communications possible.

Humans are very visual creatures. Even if there is a language
barrier between us we can usually gesture and point and eventually get
another human to understand what we are trying to convey.
(Galactic charades anyone?) If contact
is made physically then one could attempt to use the tried and true
finger pointing “Me Tarzan” method of establishing a common reference.